


No Evening in Paris

by ChrissiHR



Series: It's the Great Countdown, Darcy Lewis [11]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom, Thor - All Media Types
Genre: 31 Days Of Halloween, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Gen, October 11, October Prompt Challenge, Promptober, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Steve Rogers's Sadness Errands, Supernatural Elements, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000, Wordcount: 100-2.000, Wordcount: Under 10.000, shapeshifter!darcy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-16 05:19:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12336258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChrissiHR/pseuds/ChrissiHR
Summary: Night 11 ...in which the hero finally comes to his senses.





	No Evening in Paris

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GlynnisIsta8](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GlynnisIsta8/gifts).



> Prompt: Darcy/Steve, Sex & Candy by Marcy’s Playground
> 
> beta’d by @meliz875 @phoenix-173 @catrinasl (This story was an absolute BEAR to finish and edit. HUGE THANKS to these three ladies for all their help!)
> 
> Note: Evening in Paris is the name of one of the most popular perfumes during World War II. It was sold in lovely cobalt blue bottles. Chances are, your grandmother or an older aunt had a bottle sometime in the past century.

The windswept streets of Brooklyn were empty from every vantage point in his apartment. A few days before Halloween, a sudden cold snap blew in, just in time to keep everyone indoors except for the three hours designated by city council for trick-or-treat.

But trick-or-treat had come and gone.

Restless after the early-evening flurry of childish excitement, Steve couldn’t bear to stare at the same four walls a moment longer. The hour edged toward midnight and, still, he paced.

He needed to get out.

He found himself standing on the edge of an old schoolyard, staring at a plaque marking the former “Sisters of St. Agnes Children’s Home”. Even the modern playground equipment had seen better days, but the new slide sat in pride of place where the old slide once stood. The swings were new, but the old A-frame they hung from was the exact same one he’d shimmied up and over with Bucky a thousand times or more.

The swing chains creaked with a gust of wind, calling to the little Stevie Rogers still buried deep inside of Captain America ninety years and a lifetime later.

As dusky twilight blanketed the playground, Steve crept across the scattered wood chips, scooping up a trio of unopened Tootsie Rolls from their hiding place under the platform at one end of the monkey bars. He collapsed on a recycled tire swing, popping a piece of the candy into his mouth. He savored the sweet treat, face pressed to cold links of chain, and sank into distant memories as images from days long past played on a reel in his mind’s eye.

“ _Everything is fine, Steve_ ,” a whisper touched on his thoughts—neither intruding nor unwelcome, but definitely present. Comfort, like freshly baked pie and a soothing touch to fevered brow. He knew that voice—heard it countless times in Stark’s workshop, in the common room and the kitchen. The pretty lab assistant with the big, green eyes and soft curls framing a heart-shaped face. He…  _He knew her..._  He shook his head, but a stubborn blanket of fuzzy incomprehension lingered, muffling the driving need for this, this …  scrutiny.

“Steven.” Peggy stepped out of the shadows and out of the past, a bright blue and sable smudge against a background of dreary grey, with all the years between them stripped away.

“Peg?” his voice shook with disbelief. Decades of grief and longing compressed into mere months of mourning did nothing to assuage the ache of losing her, of being so close and still so far away. Pressing harder into the chain to ground himself in the present, he drank in the sight of his love like a long-sought mirage in the desert of his past.

Done up in a smart blue suit with red piping and a matching hat, his sweet Peg didn’t look a day older than when they parted in 1945.

But she didn’t look quite … right, either.

Even from several feet away, he felt the warmth of her presence, heard the soft shush of her wide trouser legs brushing her ankles, the steady thrum of her heart beating a rapid tattoo, warming the perfume daubed at her pulse points...

Taking a deep breath to clear his lungs, Steve drew in the heady scent of her as Peggy drifted near, but it was no Evening in Paris. Instead, her perfume bloomed rich and dark, with hints of lavender and rose over sandalwood.

She smelled nothing like Peggy.

He knew this scent. He’d know it anywhere. The scent colored his modern memories of warm, family-style breakfasts in the common room kitchen, a gap-toothed smile and a long, delicate finger swiping pancake syrup off his thumb, the way her lipstick smudged when she licked her finger, and soft, pink morning light spilling through the windows to halo her dark, chestnut curls…

And when she took his hand, he knew—

“Darcy,” he breathed, opening his eyes as he finally saw through the illusion created from textbooks and newsreels to the modern woman beneath. In Peggy’s place stood another lovely brunette with curves for days and lips painted the color of a siren’s song.

“Don’t, please,” he begged, worried she’d disappear like smoke, too, when her hands fell to her sides and she withdrew as if to step away. He grabbed her wrist to check for himself, to make sure she was real and here and he hadn’t lost his goddamned mind for good in this strange future where nothing made sense and no one was familiar and everything felt sharp and cold and grey.

Everything but her.

“Whatever you did—don’t. Don’t be her. Be…” He shook his head, drawing in a deep breath to clear it and sharpen his focus on the warm pulse beneath his fingertips, the woodsy scent of her shampoo and bodywash, the warm weight of her hip as the fingers of his other hand closed over it. “Be you,” he finally demanded. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m always me. I just… I wanted to give you her for a few moments, too.” With a butterfly-soft caress of fingertips to his temple, she bit her lip and leaned into the heat of him palming her hip. She admitted, “You’re always so sad; I wanted to help.”

Miserable all the way down to the soles of his feet with how pathetic he must have seemed and resenting like hell the pity in her voice, he flexed his fingers and stared at the trio of crumpled wrappers. “There was… You put something in the candy. You dosed me.”

“Only…” She retreated a step and regrouped, taking a seat on the swing next to him, toying with the chain links and refusing to meet his gaze as she attempted to explain, “Only a little something to help you relax—”

“So I’d forget Peggy’s lost—lost to me, lost in her head—so I’d get lost in mine, forget that this little stunt shouldn’t be possible?” he growled, then cursed himself silently, acknowledging the real anger was for himself, not for Darcy who only wanted to help a friend. For wretchedly miserable Steve, she’d done this—turned herself inside out to give him the one woman he couldn’t have when a beautiful, vibrant, interested woman like Darcy sat right here at his fingertips—kept at arm’s reach.

“To give you a break from these awful sadness errands you constantly run.” Darcy waved a hand and the smart, blue skirt suit disappeared, replaced by jeans and tall, brown boots, a sweater in warm shades of rust and cocoa. “A human can only take so much—visiting her nursing home with her favorite flowers in hand and being turned away because everyday is a bad one, talking to an empty grave as if someone is listening, sitting alone at a sidewalk cafe and sketching the faces of people who’ve been gone for decades—even keeping an apartment in Brooklyn away from your friends because Brooklyn is the only home you want to acknowledge. But it’s not where you live, Steve. It’s where you grieve.”

“A human can only take so much…” Steve mused, swallowing around the sudden lump in his throat and toeing the dirt beneath the swing, setting it to rock once more on its squeaking chains. He’d been living with ghosts so long and missed so much, missed this one really important thing about the bright spot in the dark, miserable world he’d used to cloak himself for months. How much more had he missed? How much had he taken for granted? Taking a deep breath, he pushed off, letting the dark fall away to take a good, long look at the bright future sitting right beside him. “What does that make you?”

“I’m not a monster,” she insisted, swallowing hard, eyes trained on the ground.

“Not what I said.” Again, he toed the ground and pushed off, feeling lighter with every pump of the swing.

“A shapeshifter,” she whispered, like a dirty secret only acknowledged behind closed doors.

“Like Loki?” Steve met her worried gaze when she glanced up briefly, green eyes tinged with red. Her skin flickered blue and sigils rose to the surface before she blinked and her appearance returned to its more common human color and texture.

“It runs in the family,” she admitted, stopping her swing and staggering to her feet. “I won’t bother you again. I’m sorry, Captain Rogers.”

“No, Darcy, wait!” He grabbed her hand—warm, present,  _real_ , gentling his hold when she tensed, bracing for impact. He knew Loki’s story—the prejudice he’d been raised with against his own kind—and wondered how the self-loathing taught to the father would have trickled down to his child. He needed to fix this—whatever nonsense passed down through Aesir ignorance colored her reactions now. “I’m not mad, doll. Believe it or not, I appreciate what you tried to do. I just… I don’t want lies. I don’t want… I  _can’t_  live in the past, dreaming of what could have been. It’s tearing me apart. I’d much rather—”

“I’m no liesmith.” Eyes trained on her hands, she picked at her sleeves, unwilling or unable to look him in the eye after showing him her literal true colors. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I thought I could give you—”

“I don’t want someone else,” he cut her off with an apologetic smile. “If you’d let me finish—” He lifted her hand to press a warm kiss to her knuckles. “I don’t want to live in the past. There’s nothing there for me anymore.”

Her breath hitched.

“But there’s plenty in the future, right here.” He lifted his gaze to hers as he pressed a kiss to each knuckle.

“Yeah?” her voice wavered as she exhaled.

“Have a coffee with me?” he asked. “There’s a diner—” he pointed, “—not far, just down the block. I’d like the company.”

“I’d like that, too.” She took the elbow he offered, running a hand through her hair to alter the dated Victory rolls to something more modern—a pair of fat braids dangling from either side of her head, covered by a maroon beanie.  “Better?” she asked. “It’s not very fancy.” Self-conscious, she fingered one of the intentionally messy braids.

He tipped his head to the side and eyed her critically. “It’s perfect.”

“It’s just me.” She smiled, small and hesitant.

“Like I said,” he tugged on one of her braids, “perfect.”

**Author's Note:**

> Yesterday's story, Sleepless in Orlando, has been added to a series called Cowbell (based on the first story in that series, Turn for the Worse). More will be coming in that series this week and later in the month. Keep an eye out!


End file.
